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15
on the Board or be an offce holder, so it is
very important that those members who
achieve that maintain the highest stan-
dards of integrity in their governance
role. I am very sure that the new board
will support the Chair, the deputy and
the management in the interests of the
NZMA. If they can not, they should not
take up that role. The NZMA membership
needs to have confdence in their Board
and organisation as it will fail if they do
not. Our members pay for you to represent
them and advocate on their behalf and the
behalf of all of our patients.
There has been no Chair who has not
fretted about how to reverse declining
membership numbers. I know that I
did, and then-CEO Cameron McIver and
I undertook an exhausting road show
around provincial New Zealand to take
the NZMA message out to members and
potential members.
Club and organisation membership
numbers have been falling in the last few
decades or more—be it the Bridge Club,
the Golf Club or your professional organi-
sation—the numbers of most of these are
falling and it is taxing the minds of many
to try and reverse this. Our lives have
so many distractions and the NZMA has
to compete with a lot of other demands
on our time, attention and of course our
money.
NZMA membership must be of value
to us. It is wonderfully heartening to see
the latest NZ Doctor poll saying that GPs
rated the NZMA as the organisation to
best represent them in political matters.
This is a jump from 28% to 51.4%. Yes, the
numbers were a little low, but signifcant,
and I think that is a strong vote of conf-
dence for our new Chair, in the energy
and effectiveness she has brought to the
NZMA GP Council. It is very heartening to
see that GPs are recognising the work the
NZMA has done and is doing, to support
them in their work, conditions and the
many administrative challenges that we
all face on a daily basis. Hopefully also the
defciencies in capitation funding, VLCA,
the administration burden and workforce
planning will be on the agenda.
The NZMA has a long and proud history.
It is our professional body that represents
all of us in our fght to support our
patients and conditions and access to
health care for them; it also represents
our own ethics and how we teach and
mentor our younger colleagues, and also
our relationships with one another—you,
my colleagues—how we ethically relate
together. The NZMA writes and supports
the Code of Ethics. It is a critical document
and important to all of us to know that it
is there to support and guide us.
We have a very exciting year ahead with
completing and moving into our new
building and within the next few months.
I am confdent that the NZMA will
maintain and grow its membership, but
it must use different ways from the way
it has in the past, and that certainly will
increasingly involve the use of social
media. There are many opportunities there
for us and we must be ready to capi-
talise on them. We need our keen young
members, they are our future and there is
much we can learn from each other.
FEATURE